The Cold Calling

XXVIII

Nobody said a word; that was the odd thing. No murmurings, no rustlings, no echoes from the rafters. The village was letting him have his say.

‘Nothing’s changed, has it?’ Marcus stormed. ‘Nothing’s bloody changed in nearly eighty years!’

Cindy sat and watched him explode like a series of firecrackers. Powerless to stop it, not sure he ought to try. Falconer watched too, a tiny smile plucking at a corner of his wide, professional mouth.

Leaning out of the pew, Marcus was, a wave of grey hair banging against his forehead, glasses misted, so he couldn’t, probably, even see the vicar. Who was just standing there, lips set into a typically ecclesiastical, turning-the-other-cheek pout. He knew what this was about; they all knew; they’d probably inherited the silence from their parents and grandparents.

‘Are you all bloody dumb?’ Marcus whirled on the congregation. ‘Is it really possible to sit on something for the best part of a frigging century? You really are a bunch of medieval bastards. She’d have had a better bloody deal growing up in the fucking East End!’

His voice bounced back at him off the stones. Nobody spoke, but Cindy saw compassion on the face of Amy Jenkins, an outsider who was clearly in the know. He’d persuade the truth out of her later.

‘I did say,’ the vicar said in the nearest he could manage to an undertone, ‘that you might be better advised burying her elsewhere.’

‘Oh yes, that’s a classic Anglican tactic,’ Marcus roared. ‘If in doubt, don’t get involved.’

The undertakers moved imperturbably into position around the coffin on its wooden bier.

‘You’re a very offensive man,’ observed the vicar. ‘I can tolerate only so much of this in the House of God.’

‘Before what? ‘ Marcus lunged out of the pew as if he was about to grab the vicar by the surplice and bang his head on the side of his oak pulpit.

‘Marcus …’ Cindy murmured.

‘You just stay out of this, Lewis …’

‘Come on. Let’s get some air. You’re upsetting Mrs Willis.’

‘And that,’ said Marcus, ‘is the sort of bloody thing you would say.’

As they followed the coffin and the vicar out of the church, Cindy could almost hear a communal sigh of relief and a closing of frayed curtains over the St Mary’s Silence.

She was soaked, hair matted to her face, and when Bobby Maiden found her she was stumbling around the castle walls like someone coming down from a bad acid trip or maybe a mugging. Maybe even a rape.

‘God damn it,’ she said, ‘can’t anybody around here answer a simple question?’

‘Sorry,’ Maiden said. ‘You’re about a mile and a half out of St Mary’s.’

‘Am I anywhere near, uh, Cefn-y-bedd? I say that right?’

‘That’s the University of the Earth place?’

‘Uh huh.’ She snatched off her baseball cap and shook her hair like a dog. It was blond and it came down in a wet heap.

‘I don’t know,’ Maiden said. ‘I’ve never been.’

‘Terrific.’

‘You’re on a course there?’

‘Visiting. I took a walk over …’ She shuddered and it turned into a shiver that looked like it wasn’t going to stop. ‘See, I must’ve come down the wrong way. I saw the rooftop, figured this must be Cefn-y-bedd. And then … is this some kind of castle?’

‘Some kind.’

‘Weird.’

‘You need a drink.’

‘I do,’ she said gratefully. ‘Jesus, do I need a drink.’

‘Well, that’s it, isn’t it? I’m finished. And I’m not sorry. Couldn’t give a flying fart.’

Mrs Willis had been buried in virtual silence, Marcus tossing in his clod of earth and turning away, avoiding eyes, almost running out of the churchyard. Cindy had caught up with him in the lane, under a dripping horse chestnut.

‘Like to buy a serious, parapsychological quarterly, Lewis? Christ, you can have the bastard. Change it to Shamanic Times. Have the fucking castle, too. I’ll get a council flat. They still have council flats or did Thatcher flog them all to slum landlords?’

‘This isn’t helping anyone, Marcus.’

‘Why should I want to help anyone? Mrs Willis helped people, and where did that get her? Perhaps you were right. Perhaps she was murdered. Perhaps the village murdered her with three-quarters of a century of indifference.’

‘Aren’t you coming back to the pub?’

‘What do you think?’

‘You’ve paid for the funeral tea. That gives you the right to watch them all eating it and feeling uncomfortable. I think they owe you an explanation.’

‘Then you don’t know the people of St Mary’s.’

‘And I think you owe me one.’

Marcus stopped. ‘What?’

‘Why did you keep it to yourself?’

‘What?’

‘About Annie Davies.’

‘I don’t know anything about Annie Davies.’

‘Did she tell you to keep it quiet?’

‘She didn’t tell me anything. We never discussed it. Piss off. Go and find your serial killer. I’m tired.’

‘OK. If you must know,’ Grayle said, ‘it’s not that kind of shivering.’

Maybe finding the guy easy to talk to because he looked kind of like she felt. Beat-up. Exhausted. That eyepatch. And with this air of apprehension — it was maybe an illusion, maybe she needed to feel there were other people around like this, after Roger and Adrian and the mad Cindy, who were all so sure of everything, but she felt the guy didn’t trust anybody any more.

He opened up the woodstove and tried to position a couple of logs. Not looking at her as she talked.

‘Like … things … things you see. Jesus, this doesn’t happen in my part of New York. We say it does. We love to think it does. We have a million psychics and people claiming they talk to the spirits, see the future, read stuff in the Tarot, purify your aura …’

Hearing her own voice going higher and higher, as if she’d taken a hit from a helium balloon.

‘Have another drop of Marcus’s whisky. I’ll make some tea in a minute. Go on, Miss …’

‘Underhill. G … Grayle.’ Feeling her shoulders shaking, like an apartment block about to collapse, under the sweatshirt he’d left out in the bathroom for her.

‘You weren’t attacked or anything, were you?’

‘I, uh …’ Grayle took a big swallow of whisky and coughed, tears and stuff smeared all over her face. ‘I just had to get outa there.’

‘This is Cefn-y-bedd?’

‘What? Oh hell, no, this is … this was … Black Knoll? The prehistoric … whatever you wanna call it.’

‘What were you doing there?’ His eyes going a mite watchful.

‘That place is … I mean, seriously …’ Grayle shuddered a breath down, like the dregs of a glass of milk gurgling through a straw. ‘… haunted. Right?’

Haunted. Just saying the word … it was a whole different word now.

‘Are you saying you saw something? At Black Knoll?’

‘Would you think I was real crazy? Would you think, like, here’s this insane American tourist, she’s only been here like a couple hours and she’s already going around seeing-’

Another word. Another key player from the Holy Grayle thesaurus. Ghost. Phantom. Apparition. Spook. Revenant…

‘What was it you saw?’

‘You’re gonna think I’m crazy.’

‘I’m not. Honest.’

‘OK.’ Grayle pushed her hands through her still-damp hair. ‘A girl. A young girl. In a blue dress? With flowers on it? Like billowed out, kind of Alice in Wonderland? She had also … she had like, pigtails. And she was, you know, majorly upset. Like she was as scared of me as I … Or scared of something. A frightened ghost, Jesus, how can you have a frightened ghost?’

Grayle gulped down the rest of the Scotch.

‘This is crazy. They can’t harm you. In my column — I had this column — I was always quoting people who say, Oh they can’t harm you. Like all aliens are good aliens out of Close Encounters, never Independence Day. I mean, how the fuck do they know? You’re supposed to stand there, and like, Hey, this thing can’t harm me, maybe it needs my help? Are there people who could do that? I don’t believe it. I listen to all these assholes talk about communion with the spirit world, and now I know the truth, and the truth is it never happened to them. Never … happened. To them. Or else they’d know it is not nice, not good. We shouldn’t have to see them. It is truly terrifying, even when you think you understand. It is …’

This could send you terminally crazy. Was this how it started for Ersula? Any wonder she got the hell out?

‘Oh boy.’ Grayle started to shiver again, held on to the fat dog with uneven eyes. ‘Oh Jesus.’

No more than two dozen villagers had arrived at the Tup for the tea and sandwiches paid for by Marcus. Amy Jenkins let them get on with it and joined Cindy at his table in the deepest corner.

‘It’s a can of worms, love,’ she said. ‘Fair play, if it was happening today, I don’t think there’d be a problem. But the church doesn’t have that hold any more, see.’

‘A good thing,’ Cindy said. ‘But also a bad thing. So, let me get this right, the Church said, well, visions of the Virgin Mary, that’s a Catholic thing, so we don’t want to know.’.

‘Got to remember there was a big chapel influence, too.’

‘All hellfire and damnation. And at vision at a pagan place. Devil’s work?’

‘Well, it destroyed her family, isn’t it? That was the thing. Annie’s dad, Tommy Davies, he was never much of a churchgoer, apparently. Real old farmer, the kind you don’t get much nowadays, knew everything about the weather and the … you know … the land.’

‘Moods of the land?’

‘That sort of thing. Black Knoll was a forbidden place because of the bodies of hanged criminals they used to put there. Be people then could still remember it. But Tommy Davies, he wasn’t afraid. He’d say they put up these stones to help the old-time farmers. So he’d take Annie up the Knoll on the quiet and that’s why she was never afraid. Wouldn’t have got any other village girls going up there before sunrise.’

‘Does Marcus know about this?’

Amy snorted. ‘Nobody’d tell Marcus. Fair play to him, but he’d write it all down for his magazine, and nobody wanted that.’

Cindy bit into a cream cheese and celery vol-au-vent. ‘What do you mean, it destroyed her family?’

‘Because Annie’s mam, Edna, she was all for the Church. Headmistress of the school, ran the Women’s Institute, the Parish Council. Tells Annie she’d better forget this nonsense and pray for forgiveness, and when she won’t drop it, out comes the strap. Have the social services on to her now, see, but then …’

‘Didn’t her dad do anything to stop it?’

‘Edna was the dominant one. A Cadwallader. So it was a long time, see, before Tommy Davies did what he did.’

Cindy noticed they were getting some attention, now. A big woman in a hat giving Amy daggers.

‘Don’t you go looking at me like that, Ruthie Walters,’ Amy said. ‘Or I’ll tell him how much Owen and Ron took Falconer for, for that land.’

‘Careless talk…’ said the big woman.

‘The bloody war’s over,’ Amy snapped. ‘You don’t like it, tell your Edgar to get hisself a slate at the Crown.’

Ruthie Walters scowled. Amy said, ‘Owen and Ron Jenkins are That Bastard’s cousins who used to own Black Knoll. Till they found out how badly Falconer wanted it. That’s the sort of dealing goes on in this village. Like a dog with two dicks, Owen is. Where was I?’

‘You said it was a while before Tommy Davies did what he did,’ said Cindy.

‘Well.’ Amy lowered her voice. ‘He’ve snatched that strap off Edna and he’ve nailed it to the side of the barn. If that leather ever comes off its nail, Tommy says, he’s going to use the strap on Edna till her arse is blue.’

Cindy smiled and helped himself to another vol-auvent.

‘Well, nobody ever spoke to Edna Cadwallader like that before. A headmistress commanded respect, see. So the strap never came off the nail, but Edna never spoke to Tommy again for the rest of his life. The farmhouse was divided into two. They say you can still feel the change in the atmosphere to this day when you walk from Tommy’s half into Edna’s half.’

‘Well, well,’ Cindy said. No need to guess which half Mrs Willis’s Healing Room was in. Or was it? Perhaps she’d healed the house too.

‘And the two halves … well, that happened in the village as well. Those who supported Tommy … and the so-called God-fearing half who were on Edna’s side. Or didn’t dare not to be. It was like a feud. A silent feud. A … what’s the word?’

‘Schism?’

‘Prob’ly, aye. Family against family. Hard to credit, but this is a tiny little village.’ Amy looked up. ‘Are you trying to threaten me, Ruthie Walters?’

‘Get out of it, woman,’ an old man in a flat cap said. ‘It was somethin’ an’ nothin’.’

‘Oh, there was a truce,’ Amy told Cindy. ‘And the terms were that the whole thing was forgotten. So, to this day, nobody mentions Annie Davies’s vision.’

‘Weren’t her fault, though,’ the old man said.

‘That’s why there was such a turn-out this afternoon,’ Amy said. ‘No hard feelings, Annie.’

‘Now, you can say that, Fred,’ Ruthie Walters said. ‘But whatever powers that old woman had, I’m telling you, it wasn’t Christian.’

‘Course it was Christian, woman. Look at Lettie Pritchard’s shingles. You go an’ ask her if it wasn’t Christian to have her shingles took from her, her as sung in the church choir for forty-five year.’

‘See,’ Amy said. ‘Can of worms.’

‘No!’ Marcus said. ‘Whatever it is … no! I’m going to get pissed in my study and then I’m going to bed. The only person I want to speak to is a bloody decent estate agent, and as that’s probably a contradiction in terms it doesn’t arise.’

Maiden blocked his way to the study. ‘I just think you should speak to this person. Big Mysteries are involved.’

‘I’m sure,’ Marcus said sourly.

‘Her name’s Grayle Underhill. She’s from New York. She-’

‘York?’

‘New York.’

‘A bloody American. Had a bloody American woman on the phone last week. Insane. Gabbled.’

‘That was me, Mr Bacton.’ Grayle Underhill came out of the study, carrying a tumbler with an inch of Scotch, looking very small inside the borrowed sweatshirt. ‘I called you about my sister. In the dreaming experiment? At Black Knoll?’

‘High Knoll.’ Marcus glared at her. ‘Is that my fucking whisky?’

When Marcus Bacton pulled out this leather-bound photo album, Grayle got cold feet.

‘Listen, say I … Just say I do recognize her. I could be lying. How would you know I’m not lying?’

‘I’ll know if you’re lying,’ Marcus said. ‘Thirty years of interrogating bastard schoolboys. World’s most adroit liar, the schoolboy.’

It was nearly six p.m., going dark early. In the lamplight, Marcus’s study was like something out of The Wind in the Willows. Flames in the glass-fronted woodstove. Shadows leaping up columns of books and everything misshapen and kind of organic, as if the furniture had grown out of the thick walls.

She took the album onto her knees. Part of her didn’t want to do this.

‘OK.’ She opened the album.

‘Fortunately’ — Marcus poured himself more whisky — ‘the pictures aren’t captioned or anything, and there are a lot of little kids in there, as you’ll see.’

‘I’m kinda scared to look.’

‘Where did you get this?’ said the guy with the eyepatch Marcus called Maiden.

‘Mrs Willis’s. To be honest, I pinched it in case any of the relatives tried to claim it. It’s all we have, you see. The only picture.’

‘I can’t believe I’m doing this,’ Grayle said. ‘All these years of writing about people claiming they saw ghosts. I just can’t believe I saw … Did you ever? Mr Bacton?’

‘Sore point,’ Maiden said.

‘I mean, I read hundreds of books, interviewed all these psychics and mediums. I knew if ever I saw a ghost, no way was I gonna be scared because of course a ghost is just a trick of the atmosphere, a memory imprint. Like, you see an old movie on TV and it’s Errol Flynn and you know he’s dead, you don’t go, Waaaah! That’s a dead guy! Because although I personally cannot imagine how a plastic box can bring a dead guy into my apartment, I know there are people who can, so that’s all right. And so I think … I think I lost the point. Am I burbling here? Am I gabbling? ‘

Turning the stiff card pages, peering back down a sepia century. Past men in wing collars, ladies in droopy hats. Men in baggy pants tied up with string, standing under haystacks. A line-up of small children.

Both of them watching her. Marcus with his soft bow tie and his glasses on the end of his nose. The comical dog called Malcolm watching too, through misaligned eyes. Everything completely still except for her hands turning the pages.

‘If you don’t find her,’ Marcus said, ‘it doesn’t invalidate your experience. If any of this was simple …’

But she could tell his tone was forced; Marcus was trying to keep emotion out of his voice. And Grayle was scared to look into the eyes of the children in the album. Although she knew, anyway, that the eyes were unlikely to help her, on account of none of them would be either wet with tears or flat and dead.

Lights shone in the window. Car sounds outside. Maiden stood up.

‘Probably bloody Lewis back,’ Marcus said. ‘Don’t let her in.’

And just then Grayle turned over a page and her hands sprang back from the album.

‘Red BMW. Oh my God, it’s … Oh, Christ.’

‘Oh God,’ Grayle said.

‘Underhill …?’ Marcus leaning urgently towards her.

‘Oh Jesus. I can’t believe this. This is, like …’

Marcus staring hard at her, searching her face for any sign that she was lying.